Mr. Marc Blanchet reports

H2O INNOVATION: PIEDMONT OBTAINS ITS ISO 9001: 2015 CERTIFICATION & POSITIONS ITSELF STRATEGICALLY ON THE INTERNATIONAL DESALINATION MARKET

H2O Innovation Inc.'s Piedmont has recently obtained its ISO 9001:2015 certification, ensuring quality management, from design to manufacturing, of all its products and components for water treatment systems. This is a major milestone in its strategic positioning with the major players of the desalination industry.

By 2025, the international desalination market is expected to reach $27-billion, representing a 103-per-cent increase compared with 2016, mainly driven by rapid industrialization, population growth and depletion of freshwater bodies. The Middle East and Africa are the largest markets and are expected to maintain that dominance over the coming years due to the high supply/demand gap of potable water (source: Hexa Research report, 2017).

This is why Piedmont wants to position itself strategically to better meet the price, quality and delivery requirements of its international customers. "We are proud to have obtained, in a very short amount of time, the ISO 9001:2015 certification. This certification is part of a positioning approach on the international desalination market that will certainly allow us to adequately meet the needs of our large customer base. We believe this addition will have a direct impact on increasing our sales and our customers' trust in our product lines. It is also a prerequisite for most large EPC (engineering/procurement/construction) involved in the manufacturing of large desalination plants," stated Ties Venema, commercial director of Piedmont.

Piedmont initially started offering a first line of flexible coupling products and then launched its line of cartridge filters housings made of reinforced fibreglass (FRP) two years ago. In fact, the Piedmont team is currently working on developing a third line of products that should be ready in the coming months.

About Piedmont

Piedmont is a global leader in corrosion-resistant equipment for desalination plants and meets critical customer demand for a wide range of applications in the industrial and municipal markets.

About H2O Innovation Inc.

H2O Innovation designs and provides state-of-the-art, custom-built and integrated water treatment solutions based on membrane filtration technology for municipal, industrial, energy and natural resources end-users. The corporation's activities rely on three pillars, which are: (i) water and waste water projects; (ii) specialty products and services, including a complete line of specialty chemicals, consumables and specialized products for the water treatment industry as well as control and monitoring systems; and (iii) operation and maintenance services for water and waste water treatment systems.